CHAPTER VII
TRIXIE
It was sixteen years since the night of the ball in India when Mrs. Greaves had twisted her ankle, and had sat on the dais with the wife of a senior civilian discussing the unfortunate domestic affairs of Captain and Mrs. Coventry.
Now Mrs. Greaves's husband was a retired colonel, and they were living comfortably, if dully, within their means in a convenient suburb of London, engrossed in the careers of their boys, content with their surroundings, with their well-built villa, their well-trained maids, their patch of garden and their neighbours--mostly staunch old Indian friends.
Until lately Mrs. Munro, now for years a widow, had been one of these neighbours, living quietly with Trixie her daughter at the end of the Greaves's road in a little house called "Almorah." Hereabouts many of the houses bore names reminiscent of India--rather pathetic links with a past that some of the occupants frequently glorified into "happier days," forgetting as frequently how they had pined for an English home while living in exile. More or less unconsciously the little colony of "old Indians" preserved among themselves various propensities acquired during their service abroad. For example, they bought each others' furniture, borrowed and loaned belongings with ready good nature, paid informal visits chiefly in the mornings, quarrelled sometimes about nothing, and were inclined to be exclusive outside their own circle.
They were all very happy and comfortable in spite of past glories, whether real or imagined, and when Trixie Munro grew up and clamoured for change, her godmother, Marion Greaves ("Gommie," as Trixie had called her ever since she could talk), urged Ellen Munro to let well alone and stay where she was--to pay no attention to Trixie's ridiculous hankerings after a London flat.
"You can't afford the move, my dear," she had said with truth, "and the sooner Trixie learns that other things matter besides her own whims the better." Trixie and Gommie were more often at war than on terms of peace.
However, persuasions and warnings failed, the obstacle being that the mother's whole life was bound up in the child, and for Trixie to be disappointed meant double distress for Mrs. Munro. Therefore the removal from "Almorah" to the flat in West Kensington, which was all Mrs. Munro could achieve on her income, had been accomplished in direct opposition to Mrs. Greaves's concerned and strenuous advice.
Now, on a wet afternoon in January Mrs. Greaves was starting from her suburban home to have tea in "Mulberry Mansions, West Kensington, W.," with Ellen Munro. Though her once crisp chestnut hair was faded and grey, and her sharp little face had lost its freshness and its freckles--no longer could she claim to be called "The Plover's Egg"--she had kept her health and her trimness of figure, and had lost none of her practical, vigorous grip on existence.
She selected an umbrella--not her best--from the stand in the hall, and opened the front door. A cold, wet wind blew into her face; the outlook was not encouraging, and the walk to the station would hardly be pleasant in such horrible weather. But with her usual determination she closed the door firmly behind her, giving it a pull to make sure it was shut, and set off in the wind and the rain undaunted. She trudged down the hill, traversed a long stretch of road bounded chiefly by boards that advertised plots of "desirable" land for building, and arrived at the tram-riddled town. On the way to the station, she entered a flower shop and purchased a large bunch of violets. When she emerged from the underground railway station into the muddy London street, she had to wrestle with the second-best umbrella that endeavoured to turn inside out. It was a ten minutes' walk to the Munros' little flat, and that she was carrying the large bunch of violets in a paper cone added to her difficulties in the wind and the rain; but she was wearing an old coat and skirt, and she felt it would be an unnecessary extravagance to take a cab. Ellen Munro would provide shoes and stockings while her own were being dried in the kitchen. She knew that Ellen was at home only to herself on the periodical occasions when she came up from the suburb for tea and a talk over old times.